Licensing Questions

Flame Flame Questions
1

Ever since reports have come in from MULTIPLE studios that I know that ADSK was starting to accuse valid-subscription users of overusing their subscription.

I have since done a absolute hawkeye job of making damn sure that no license is ever overused by removing user profiles from macs and by assinging 1 license per machine used so youd never have to login/out as every machine was always licensed without the option of anyone logging in themselfes as nobody but me have the logins, but I am SUPER scared of this and i just want some things clarified

As far as I understand it :

there was almost no way for a admin to really check what was used when and how, everyone assumed that because cloud licensing was used that it would just not LET YOU overuse it, just like a floating license server wouldnt let you overuse (DUH!)

However - it just happily let you start flame on multiple machines, i think 2 ?

and then you got a email from adsks wanting money for overuse.

This sounds like a crazy trap to me, no warnings, no way of controlling it? what if i assign a license to a user, user launches flame at home, forgets to logg out and then drives to the office? i mean there are so many cases where this could happen on accident , i dont even know where to start.

main question::
So now as far as I understand, this is NOT possible anymore, right ? so I can start assigining users licenses again without having to worry about this happening?

So they can actually start flame on their laptops, then if they go to the office, start flame they get a thing saying please log out of your other machine (do i have to log out or is closing flame enough?) Can I force logout someone if they forget, whats the workflow here?

another question, if I buy Flare/FlameAssist licenses via a reseller will they show up in my autodesk account just the same as flame licenses and I can assign them to people? why cant i just buy them online? so weird

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2

Totally hear you on that, and itā€™s on my mind too.

I do have my license installed on multiple systems, but am diligent about having Flame only open on a single machine at a time.

The biggest gap seems to be - when you just Exit Flame, does it record at the ADSK licensing server that you closed the app? And what happens if the app crashed? Because if I diligently close Flame on my Mac because Iā€™m switching over to my Linux Flame, but that fact doesnā€™t get recorded properly, then your fucked basically, right?

Clearly they check if a license is available, but the valuable part of the floating license server and Flex was that it was very good at knowing when youā€™re done.

There is this little menu in to bottom right, which seems to be much more explicit about ā€˜logging outā€™ which may be the correct way of releasing the license on a machine. Except I doubt anyone does thatā€¦

Would be good to know the answer to this one. Last time we brought this up it was crickets.

Screenshot 2024-10-12 at 10.36.42 AM

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3

exactly, Its not even like I am bold enough to just ā€œtryā€ it out i mean, not with the danger of beign sued ā€¦ scary thats what it is

4

About two years ago I got an email from Autodesk about licensing compliance. The way the email was worded came across very accusatory - like they had caught us pirating software. They wanted us to run a program that would scan our whole network to validate all Autodesk software installations.

So my first thought was that it was phishing. No way Iā€™m gonna allow anything to scan my whole network. I emailed flame support to see if it was valid. They said it was. Then I talked to the Autodesk ā€˜compliance departmentā€™ because the scanning app was only available on windows. We have zero windows machines in the office.

After getting forwarded to a few different peopleā€¦ I finally got an email that said please just send us a screenshot of each flame license. And that was it. What a joke.

So anywayā€¦ I donā€™t have an answer for you but that whole process really put me off on Autodesk at the mega-corporation level.

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5

Exactly. Quite a few us are spending considerable spare time helping this community and making Flame a better product, participating in the beta program, doing market research and design reviews with their teams, etc.

But then having the licensing police watch you like a hawk feels very wrong.

Especially, if it really comes down to their software not tracking when you closed an app, thatā€™s their shortcoming, not ours. A lot of other companies have solved this problem without sending threatening letters.

But then their whole licensing department may need an overhaul, as evidenced with all the bugs they have with SSL certs, etc. and their challenges in debugging this.

In a way not surprising I guess.

If all fails, thereā€™s always Nuke. Havenā€™t had any problems with The Foundry.

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6

foundry is super agressive as well, their cloud licensing is also not ideal.

Sidefx cloud licenserver is the same, highly problematic keep crapping out mid render

honestly at this point adobe has good licensing -.-

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7

So far had no problem with Nuke. And if I forget to close on the other system it will give me an error as I would expect. But there may be other issues.

Agree that Adobeā€™s implementation is the standard they should all strive to.

1 Like
8

yea but then you have to login to their websit and it just shows you a system
ID instead of a actual identifier :joy: idk

Resolve is super similar to adobe, but yea I would be happy with adobes way, just please let me just stay logged in, me having to login everytime i get kicked is just annoying

Anyhow, I will try to hop
ona call with adsk sales or talk to a reseller as i really dont want to end up getting into trouble for what I think is correct use of licenseā€¦

Is it too much to ask that if you dont actively crack stuff that the software doesnt launch if its not considered ā€œcorrectā€ useage?? That whole license overuse bs, imagine you have 20 nuke licenses and they let you check out 30 and then send you a angry email.

i mean wtf.

2 Likes
9

Itā€™s a shame that token licensing costs approximately 3x more than any other method of licensing.

10

I know a whole lot of people hate them but Iā€™ve always been a fan of license dongles. If we manage to carry keys around for cars and houses then why not software?

Obviously no good for cloud instances though.

11

Ah yes, iLok. I have countless audio licenses linked to my iLok. Media Composer used to rely on it too.

iLok supports cloud licensing.

Two of my Resolve licenses are dongles.

And RSA fobs and YubiKeys for MFA.

12

Or just have flame logout the license when you exit. I have to type in a password to unlock my system all the time. Entering a second one when launching Flame isnā€™t a big deal.

Donā€™t Flame licenses tie in with OS user too? So if you log out of your OS user does it log out the Flame license? I kind of doubt it.

13

I think thatā€™s the crux. When they switched to login licenses instead of system licenses, the Flame UI wasnā€™t fully redesigned to account for that.

1 Like
14

Me too, huge dongle fan.

Ive got many resolve dongles and I just know i can start resolve anytime without having any issues. I would compeltely ADORE flame dongles.

If you dont have unified user management / Active Directory because you are too small for this stuff - user based licensing is just stupid.

Especially as some software goes user based some go systemID , and then you have this huge licensing bottleneck.

If you have a AD setup does the adak license follow a user across machines without logging in? I guess I would need to somehow connect these via ldap, no idea.

I just want my rlm server back :frowning:

1 Like
15

@andymilkis Would a licensing Q and A with someone from adsk licensing and compliance not be something great? I am sure many smaller shops and freelancers are feeling a bit freaked out by all of this as I am?

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16

I can certainly ask, and Iā€™ll let you know what/if I hear back. I do think itā€™s important to add to the thread that our friends on the Dev Team donā€™t have anything to do with licensing. This seems to be something thatā€™s handled at the corporate level. To be clear: Thereā€™s nothing that Iā€™ve read in the thread that is making me add thisā€¦just wanted to do it. :heart_on_fire:

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17

totally - good add!!

18

Your memory is correct. We covered this ground before:

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19

@fredwarren @Slabrie
If someone was to make a feature request that there could be the option (not default) to log out the license on Flame exit, would that be hard to implement?
Asking for some Flame friendsā€¦

1 Like
20

@tombox - iā€™d be curious to listen to the experience of an expert on how license usage is managed in a purely cloud environment?

This could help some people to determine whether or not they will buy an on premises workstation on their next refresh, or work with a provider that can get them in to the cloud.